Coming Home
by tartan robes
Summary: "Perhaps it's time, Mr. Carson." A set of drabbles surrounding the retirement of a certain housekeeper and butler.
1. Chapter 1

i.

They say Old Carson will work himself into his grave. Certainly, over the years he's had a few close calls. So when his heart clamps up for the second time, Clarkson says maybe it's time.

(He knows all about time. While he is imprisoned in his bed, all he dreams about is time. The clock and the dinner gong and minute hand of work lapping the hour hand, life. He knows - like he knows breathing, second nature - exactly when he should be serving dinner and when the footmen should be up, but he cannot understand when to stop.)

Mrs. Hughes comes to his bedside (she only does when he's sick or wheezing, only ever sees him at his worst) and studies him carefully, saying nothing. He wonders when her hair became so grey, wonders what he must look like. The light pools around the lines around her mouth, her eyes, and instinctively he knows, knows what they look like when they frown or smile, when she's cross or when she's upset. She is none of those things, not now, not today.

They study each other without saying anything, not with their mouths or with their eyes. (But it's always been this way. They say the most when they say nothing at all.)

She says, "Perhaps it's time, Mr. Carson."

He wants to argue, but he's forgotten how. "I don't know," he says instead, "any other life." He's forgotten his past too, scattered that behind him, buried it beneath wallpaper and in the open mouths of china vases. A house like this is always so hungry for secrets, and he's always had so many to give. "I don't know what I'd do -" He has worked so hard, so hard to be nothing but a butler. (Not a silly boy, not a sinning singer, just a butler, only a butler.)

The light shifts; she smiles at him, "You could relax then. Sleep more. Go slow. Let your heart beat a normal rate for once."

Silence again. He contemplates her words in between the thunderclaps of his heart.

And then, very quiet, "I'd go with you."

(Neither of them have thought much of retirement. When would they? Between accounts and footmen and maids, when would they find the time? When was there ever time for anything but the house? But, in the same way, they have never thought of retirement without one another.)

"Would you?" (The minute hand stops; he forgets how to breathe.)

"Well," she says, "you'd work yourself into a state without me." A sigh, "And it's like you've always said, isn't it? Leave nothing to chance." (He's never been too sure what he's believed life to be, but for Elsie Hughes he's sure that life is choices. There isn't fate or destiny, not for her. There isn't luck or chance. Just choices. He doesn't allow himself to wonder why, now, she is choosing him.)

She nods again, her keys in her hands and her knuckles turning white around them. She goes through them one by one. "Yes, Mr. Carson," she says, "it's time."

"It's time for us to leave."

ii.

Plans are made, mostly by her (she's always been better at it, always will be). She speaks with Lord and Lady Grantham, arranges interviews and promotions. Perhaps it's just another duty, just another order of business for her. He sees her, sometimes, through a door left ajar or her shadow stretching down the hallway. She annotates the accounts, instructs the maids more forcefully. They still have tea, still talk in the evenings – as if nothing is different, nothing has changed. But sometimes, mid-sip, her eyes will go wide and she'll rest the glass down. "I must remember," she whispers, mostly to herself, "to remind –" She never finishes those sentences, merely knits her fingers together and nods. Maybe it's just another duty to her.

For his part, he wanders the halls more slowly (and not just because his bones are like anchors stitched beneath his skin, heavier). He tries to memorize every stone, every archway. He does so in units of measurement, the number of steps it takes him to walk down a hallway, the weight of a tray above his palms. He closes his eyes and tries to rebuild Downton in his mind – over and over again until it's all he can see. It's his home. His only home and his only family. Downton is everything.

It's time for us to leave, she had said, but how do you leave home? How do you leave the one place that makes sense?

It's another duty to her, but, for him, it's a funeral.

iii.

But then he sees her locking doors. She does it carefully, slowly, closes her eyes. And she must be thinking the same things he does, imaging the house in different ways, committing every key to heart. Perhaps they feel the same things.

Perhaps they always have.

iv.

They walk to the cottage. She doesn't comment on how slow he is, how slow he's become with his legs as metal as the silver he polishes, and he says nothing of the way her hand opens and closes, constantly, over the space where her keys should be. She walks slower for him; he considers taking her hand.

The house – their house, or it will be soon enough – is small. He bends a bit to get through the front door and they go through every room too quickly. It feels wrong. The tight quarters and the sparse rooms. There's nothing to polish here; there are no labyrinths or mazes. It's not very grand. (He's not a man of grandness himself, he knows that. A man of pride, yes. A good butler. But he is a man used to grandeur, even if it's borrowed.)

She frowns as they both stand in the first room (he's not sure what it is, what it's supposed to be; he's not sure what it would be back home). The ceilings are lower and the walls are closer, but somehow they both seem impossibly small. There's no purpose, no point. He catches himself slouching, scolds himself. Her head tilts. She looks at him, cautious.

"Will you be happy here, Mr. Carson?"

"Will you, Mrs. Hughes?"

Silence again. It's not as comfortable as it is in a pantry or a parlour.

"Will we be happy here?" They ask it at the same time. Hesitantly, they laugh.

She smiles at him and the room isn't so big, so unfamiliar.

"Yes," she bites her lip, "I think we could be."

He opens the door for her, "I think we will be."

v.

It occurs to him that they will be living together. Of course, he already knew as much. But they won't be living together like they do now. It will be a different together. Just the two of them. Together.

A thousand different rules spring to mind. Them. Together. What will the village say? Together. A new question forms in his mind. (And part of him feels as though he might have asked it long ago – in all the pauses and the moments when his fingers skimmed hers, passing wine, and all the times they have stood side by side.)

vi.

The wine bottle is open on the table, but the glasses are empty.

She raises a brow, "Are you going to pour tonight, Mr. Carson, or shall I do the honours?"

He clears his throat in response, stands.

"Mrs. Hughes, I was wondering if – that is we have known each other for an awfully long time and I – and we – we will be living together within the next month – not the sort of together we –" His voice falters, fumbles. He has served Earls and Dukes, but he cannot string the sentences together, "anyway I was wondering if – given our situation – which isn't to say I wouldn't ask you if things were different because – what I mean to say is – perhaps I have wanted to ask you for a very long time –"

Elsie Hughes stands. Her hands slip around his (and he thinks this is, must be, the first time he's ever held her hand, but it feels like the thousandth). He's choking and stammering and she holds his hands. Her fingers squeeze gently, shushes him.

"Charles Carson," she says and her voice is calm and even, all the steadiness, the strength he has always known it to have, "will you make an old woman very happy," are they really that old? he thinks; something about the light and the air and feeling of her palms against his has transformed her (she's a housemaid now or maybe a housekeeper at her first garden party, red in her hair instead of grey; he sees her as he used to, as he's always), "and marry me?"

The pressure lifts. All of it. His heart becomes steady and his breath even. The pressure – all twenty, thirty, hundred years of it – leaves him. He's been waiting for that question for a long time. Maybe forever. (And then, that other part of him prods, perhaps he has already heard it. Certainly, he already knows his answer.)

"Yes."

Her hands leave him and she reaches for the bottle. "Now," she grins, "I believe we have something proper to celebrate."

vii.

He hums in the morning. He could have danced through lunch. But at dinner, something finally clicks inside him. It consumes him slowly, burns him carefully.

It's not proper, he thinks, for a woman to ask a man, is it? It's simply not how things are done.

"Carson? All you all right?" Lady Mary asks from across the table.

"Is there something wrong with the wall?" Lord Grantham half-jokes, "you've been staring at it for three minutes."

"I'm terribly sorry, M'lord," he would have jumped out of his skin if he still knew how to jump. "I don't know what came over me."

It isn't proper, is it?

viii.

That night, he pours tea instead of wine and says, "Do you think, perhaps, we ought to try again?"

She looks up from her reflection, frowns. "Try what?"

"Well, usually, Mrs. Hughes, the man asks a woman –"

She's set down her cup. Her finger fold over one another. An eyebrow arches.

He swallows, "What I mean to say is perhaps we ought to do things properly and I ought to ask you –"

She says nothing.

He forgets how to speak again. Pauses, takes another sip of his tea.

"Good," she picks up her glass again. "I thought so."

ix.

On the last night, they lock the house together.

They walk without making a sound, as if they're ghosts already, as if they've already left. The house is dark and the lights are off and they pass door frame after frame without saying a word. The only sounds are the wind whistling by windows and her keys, just as quiet, chirping at her hip. He turns every lock slowly. She holds her breath when he does. It occurs to him they could have walked this path blindfolded. They've done it so many times before. They could have been tightrope walkers and still, they'd never fall. Around him, shadows make unfamiliar patterns on the wall.

He looks at her; she smiles.

When the last lock is turned, she extends a hand. He breathes in; she breathes out. He holds her tighter.

"Mr. Carson," she says and he can only nod, his throat too dry and his eyes too damp.

They walk up the stairs side by side, hand in hand.

x.

He looks at her before she locks the last door, the one that has always separated the male servants from the women, him from her.

She holds the key for a moment too long and he stares at her for even longer.

"It's time, Mrs. Hughes," he says, his voice quiet and hoarse.

She breathes in; he breathes out.

The door locks.

"Goodnight, Mr. Carson."

* * *

_So, after all that Cora/Hughes I'm, uh, returning to my roots? I don't really know what this is, but I do have a few retirement-centred moments I'd like to get out onto the table, so this fic happened. I doubt it will be very long, just a brief interlude as I try to finish other projects or work or something more angsty. Who knows.  
_


	2. Chapter 2

i.

She doesn't buy a new dress and he was never one to own many suits. They walk down the aisle arm in arm and he is a valet and she is the head housemaid (the first time he saw her, their steps equally serious, she didn't smile when they passed each other in the hall); he is trading his footman livery for a butler's suit and she's holding her keys for the first time (the first time he invited her into his office, she didn't drink a drop); they are standing side by side at a garden party (and then another, and then ten more after that); they are in his bedroom, the first time his heart gives out. The ceremony is short – he fumbles with the rings and she bites her lip to stop from smiling so much – but the walk takes a lifetime. It's always been their way.

ii.

Rings on their fingers, he takes her hands again and kisses her. It's been decades since he's kissed a woman, maybe half a century. Maybe more. It's been an eternity and they are both forgetful – not of rotas and linens, but of touch and feel – and so the kiss is brief and nervous. It's been decades since he's kissed a woman. It's the first time he's ever kissed her.

He cannot bring himself to regret a single thing.

iii.

Mary Crawley and Anna Bates, the lady and her maid, are the only two in attendance. (They would not, quite simply, take no for an answer.)

Anna combs her fingers through a kaleidoscope of petals, studies the way Mrs. Hughes' – or is it Mrs. Carson now? – hands tighten around Mr. Carson's. She smiles at the ground and then at her lady, leans over and whispers, "It's a bit like watching your parents get married, isn't it?"

Lady Mary Crawley's fingers seek her own ring, but her eyes are fixed on her butler. She smiles, without teeth but not without heart. "Yes," she breathes, "yes it is."

iv.

They open the cottage door and for the first time it's home (it doesn't feel like it yet; the shadows are wrong and the light is new but it is home regardless).

He holds her hand and she squeezes it gently. (His mind is a whirlwind of past and present. There are things to be done, things that must be done – it's only proper – after one is married. But his bones are old and his muscles without memory. He doesn't know if can, if he should – how.) She squeezes his hand and he breathes out.

There is no money to go somewhere, anywhere and even if there were, he wouldn't have. (He is already too far from the abbey, too far from home). So he lets her lead him to the small couch instead and they watch flames spit out fireworks and smoke through the evening. She sits next to him (she has never sat next to him before, only opposite) and, in the silence, there is something more intimate than touch.

They fall asleep like that, side by side. He wakes up and her head is resting against his shoulder, something more intimate than touch alone linking him to her.

v.

Habits are hard to break – especially when you are as old as them, as stubborn as them. They have one bedroom but two beds. It never occurs to them, never occurred to them, to have just one. They have had their own beds for their entire lives, maybe longer; they don't know how to fit together. (A bed of her own feels natural; a bed of his own is the only proper thing he has ever known.) Linking the two beds is a single table – her books here, his there. Possessions get jumbled and mixed on that small island; the borders get confused. It is the only place.

He doesn't notice it until a week after unpacking, of putting things here and placing things there, of transforming a house into a home.

He's looking for a book, but the titles are mangled, nothing makes sense.

"Mrs. Hughes," he says because she will always be Mrs. Hughes (there is something wrong in calling her Mrs. Carson, because she is not his, because she hasn't changed a bit – and he'd keep it that way for over an eternity if he could), "what have you done to the bookshelf?"

"Put books on it, I imagine," she calls from the kitchen. (It dawns on them, a week in, that neither of them knows how to cook. She knows only rudimentary childhood recipes and he only knows how to hold a fork. They spend the first week homesick, she grumbling about how she almost misses the store cupboard spars – and he knows it is not an almost but a truth.) She still walks silently to his side (just as she still stands, reflex, when he enters the room).

"Well, evidently, you didn't order them correctly."

"I'm sorry, Mr. Carson," she says, because he has always been Mr. Carson and he always will be (even if she wished to change this fact, she knows she couldn't), "what exactly is the problem?"

He's uprooting novels, re-stacking them on the floor, "Do you sort them in by title?"

"Aye."

He looks at her a bit incredulously and she fixes him with a stare.

"Well, no one does that," he says, affronted, by way of explanation, "the sensible thing to do is sort them by author."

"And why would I do that? The story is more important than who penned it."

"It's not how his Lordship had it done."

"We're not at his Lordship's anymore, Mr. Carson."

She leaves him just as silently as she came.

vi.

But she looks at him, faces him, every night before they fall asleep. And he does the same.

She smiles at him, always, before he closes his eyes.

It's enough.

vii.

It becomes second nature to slip the ring off midday, polish it as though it were the silverware or a piece of crystal. It doesn't shine in the same way, nothing about his ring demands attention or magnificence, but his reflection seems more at ease in the gold. It fits better than his face splintered in the silver.

She takes her ring off the morning after, never wears it again. The weight around her fingers feels foreign, unnatural. She has gone a whole lifetime using, knowing her hands. She cannot stand for them to be strangers. She ties the ring to her hip instead, pretends it sounds like a flock of keys, a thousand locked doors. She prefers the weight here, at her side.

They try to make something old out of something new.

viii.

There's too much time in the day. They still wake up before the footmen (miles away, they are all still dreaming). Sometimes, they sit in the dark, light just creeping into the room. Her hair mussed and near-wild in the morning and his curling over his forehead. She has never looked more human to him, more fragile, and he wishes to reach out between the ocean that divides his bed from hers. (He watches her do her hair in the morning, fascinated by the way she comes together, strand by strand.) Instead, he can only smile, ancient and slow, but she smiles back, the strength curving through her lip. (He remembers the first, the last time he kissed her. Wonders if that strength will ever manifest itself there, in touch and feel, or if they are already too late.)

She spends her time fussing over him and his frantic heart. Rest, Mr. Carson. Breathe easy, Mr. Carson. Let me do that, Mr. Carson. Mrs. Hughes spends her time flying about him until he reaches out a hand, catches her sleeve. The teacups let out chimneys of smoke between them.

"Sit with me, Elsie." A pause. "Please."

Mrs. Hughes will spend the rest of her days fussing over him (and he wishes he knew how to, was strong enough to do the same for her), but in the afternoons when the light is warmest and the tea is strongest, Elsie Hughes sits with him. It's enough. It's more than enough.

ix.

There will be things, he concedes, they will never know about each other. Argyll (a father she never mentions, a mother who only causes her to frown, a sister who makes her sigh) is swept under the bed and he never once mentions music halls. (There are days when they both long for the sound of ascending steps and the rush, the careless tide of downstairs, but most days he finds himself comfortable with the silence, the absence of song and rhythm.) There are things that they still don't know how to say, that they can't put to words.

It doesn't matter.

She sits by his side and he knows they are different people. He is not the fool from the halls and she is no farm girl. He no longer sings; she has pulled the ghosts out from under her skin. Life has changed them. They're different people. Life has brought them to each other, bound and tied them together (she grabs, sometimes, without thinking the ring at her side and he lets his palm close over his, worshiping the feeling of the shine, the slipping warmth).

It's all they need to know. (And the people they are now, they know inside-out.)

x.

They wake up one grey morning and there is no light.

There's the shadow of her face, the sound of a hand undoing a braid.

He breathes in.

There are things they will never tell each other. There are things he doesn't know how to say.

There is the sound of his old bones standing, of wading through the invisible tides, of finding the shore. They sit side by side on the bed. He covers her hands with his.

There are silent languages still left to learn. And for her – always for her – he will try.

He kisses her with caution. He will try. They will learn. There are things they don't know how to say, but they will try.

Against his cheek, her voice spells out in a whisper, "This isn't proper."

"We're not at Downton anymore, Mrs. Hughes."

He thinks, maybe, she laughs. He kisses her again.

(Somewhere else, the footmen are stirring from their dreams. He realizes he's been living his all along.)

* * *

_Sorry this update is rather late. I just wasn't in the right frame of mind to sit down and right it all until today. I'm not really sure where these are going, to be honest. Just expelling some thoughts and feelings, but maybe I can go for another chapter? I don't know what would be best. Regardless, thank you so much for the reviews so far. You guys are much too kind to me. _


	3. Chapter 3

_I'm really unsure about this chapter, but uh, I'll put it up for now, at least.  
_

* * *

i.

He thinks (thinks because he cannot say for certain, because his mind is so thick with fictions, pieces of him shunned and avoided, left behind) the last time he kissed a girl, something changed inside him. Of course, he cannot be sure of this anymore. He can't remember her face or even her name – or if she existed at all. (Was there anyone before Downton? Before Elsie Hughes?) But he remembers the careless energy that used to run through him, an eagerness and a longing, waiting around staircases, walking faster, walking slower, trying to make his pace match hers. He remembers courting, a pursuit.

Nothing changes after that morning. Not in the same way. A boy does not become a man and there is no thrill of victory; powder sets over his bones. He kisses her twice and then she strokes his hand. He kisses her twice and then she is rising, fixing her hair. (He turns away, as always, when she slips the nightgown from her shoulders, laces the corset tight.) Nothing immediate changes – except for the little things.

They have been coming together for decades now and two kisses alone could never fill the spaces or bind what's already there.

But something gets stitched together that morning.

Nothing changes.

Everything changes.

ii.

Conversation is never difficult between them, except in that period between sunset, when they lie facing the ceiling, searching for sleep.

In the absolute silence, he tries to measure the distance between him and her. He rolls over onto his side and she smiles back at him.

When his mind stops filling itself with tasks and duties, the questions begin again. He bites his tongue. She reaches over for a glass of water. A metal lid flaps open and then shut. No water comes out. The distance between them – he could count it in breaths, in fingertips, in pulses – is slight. She's abstract up close; he has to crane to see more than just the mauve stripes of her nightgown. He strains to catch her face. There's a sigh. She begins to turn; the space between them gulfs.

(He knows measurements. He knows absence and forgetting. But filling in the spaces is still a struggle.)

His voice croaks (and he is certain, as soon as the words have left, he will regret them), "Why are you here?"

She turns. Perhaps she thinks him as frail as a child; her smile has softened (or perhaps he's simply making up details; there's no light in the room).

"To take care of you," she lets out a breath that could have been a laugh, but there's no joke. She pauses, sits at the foot of his bed, reaches for his hand, hesitates -

"Why?"

"Because I'm your friend, Mr. Carson."

Her movements, then, are careful but still too quick for him to judge. The distance is measured in fingertips: over the back of his hand, the crook of his elbow, the bulge of his shoulder, the slope of his jaw. She kisses him with caution, still trying to remember the motions. She kisses him and there's clarity in her smile.

She kisses him and then leaves for that glass of water.

He's asleep when she returns.

iii.

He watches her when she changes the linens. Usually from the other room, a book in hand. (She insists, always, that he sit down, leave it to her. "I'm more than capable, Mr. Carson," and then, "you do remember why we're here don't you?" Some days, he honestly does not. He's too good at forgetting himself; sometimes, this life becomes all he has known, all he should know. "For your heart," she answers herself when he is silent, "we can't strain it.")

Her dress is black and the sheets are white. They move over the bed like sea foam, catching sunlight, filtering it. (Sometimes, she nearly swears. A _tch _of irritation, a soft "blast" muttered under her breath.) She's not as good at it as she used to be.

(Which is an embarrassment, for her at least. She spent decades doing this. She was a maid once, a farm girl once. But the chores are harder now, strangers now.)

He puts the book down.

Hands grab the other white corners, catching sunlight in his palm, "How exactly does one do this, Mrs. Hughes?"

They struggle through it together. (She manages, but he is awful. It's all right. Something about all of it – and perhaps it is the angle of her face, the way her hands run over the fabric – is all right.)

iv.

"I'm sorry," she says at dinner, "I know you like things to be perfect."

(Both of them do. You can't be good at either of their professions, ex-professions, if you aim for adequate, and so the apology is as much to herself as it is to him.)

"It's fine."

(He likes _Downton _to be perfect. The grand archways and the grandeur of the family – his family, always his family – must always be at its height. But he is not a lord, not a man of greatness. In the back of his mind, a medley of music halls resurfaces – no, he's a fool, a man of errors and mistakes. He doesn't deserve what his family is owed.)

She raises a brow.

"Really," he insists, "it's perfect."

(Because something about it, though he still can't place it, is.)

v.

Perhaps, he sometimes thinks – when she sits beside him and allows herself to break the barrier, for her arm to brush his, rest against him for a moment – they have been courting each other for decades.

vi.

But no, it's more than that. They have been friends for decades, good friends, the best of friends. The sort of friendship that does not need questions, doesn't demand answers, simply knows. They have been friends for decades and sometime, somewhere (he could not pinpoint the location, the moment his heart changed its beat for the life of him) something else took root.

It's been growing for a very long time.

vii.

He wakes up one night and she's left her bed.

The need to sleep leaves him. He gets up, wanders through their few hallways. He doesn't know where he expects her to be. Every room is empty; the house is still.

He opens the front door.

She's standing at the end of the path, a coat thrown over her shoulders. She's just a silhouette in the distance. (But even when he gets closer, she still seems like a shadow.)

She jumps, just slightly, when she catches him beside her. The sky is large and looming and something about her face – the bridge of her nose, line of a frown illuminated in the night – seems oddly frail. He holds his breath. She's shaking, but it's a warm evening. She's shaking; she doesn't look him in the eye. (He's never seen her like this and, judging from the sharp curl of her fingers, the way she bites her lip, trying to find control once more, it's been a long time since she has either.)

"I – Our farmhouse was very much like this," her voice is soft and she's trying to keep it steady. "In some ways. Completely different in others. I'm sorry, I just –"

They're friends (and then something else, but friends first, always friends first) and their friendship demands no answers.

He squeezes her hand. She exhales carefully, and then she leans, rests her shoulder against his.

He holds her there, an arm around her shoulders. Inhale, exhale. He counts the distance in breaths – and then in nothing at all.

viii.

She remembers how to do the linens, cooking comes back bit by bit. Whatever balance she lost is regained; her smile is familiar.

ix.

Their wine glasses lie, half-empty, half-full, on the table. She turns the page of her book (_Dracula_), he flicks through his (a history tome). (It's strange for him, but mostly for her, the amount of nothing to do in the house. It's so small. The chores come and go; there is nothing to manage but themselves. They're still adjusting.)

Her shoulder presses against his, not insistent or unnatural, almost as if it was meant to be there from the start.

x.

They don't talk about it – it just sort of happens.

The desk – her books and his tie, a used candle and an empty glass of water – is moved to the side. The two beds become one and they don't comment on the shift, the change. (He still turns away when she undoes her laces.) And they don't sleep holding each other, neither of them care much for that. But when the light disappears from the room, his fingers sometimes brush hers, or she turns and her mouth is close, so close to his.

Another new familiarity, another adjustment.

(In some ways, she thinks, the house is the same. In other ways, it's completely different.)

* * *

_So uh yes. I'm not sure I like this chapter or that I'll keep it, but we'll see. Regardless, thank you all so much for all of your reviews. They're really too kind.  
_


	4. Chapter 4

i.

The window creaks, did you know that? Is what he wants to say.

He imagines her response: Go to sleep, Mr. Carson. Did you just notice that, Mr. Carson? It's been like that for a week, at least. The windows were their own symphony back at Downton, Mr. Carson.

But he hasn't asked any questions, so her only answer is to turn, slightly, at his side. He holds her; it seems the proper thing to do. She's exhaling against his neck and he's inhaling into her hair and he wonders if it's always been like this. Separated by a hallway, by a flight of stairs, by locks and keys – but still the same: inhale, exhale, loop, repeat.

He wonders if this is a sign of age, of a mind falling to pieces. He was never this romantic before. (Or was he? There were things he tried to wash from the music halls: scrub out saturated lights and perfumes of smoke and rouge; maybe romance was the one thing that never came out.) He breathes in (and she doesn't smell like a stage, doesn't smell like anything other than home) and reaches over her carefully. (The table was moved to her side of the bed; it only seemed proper. She had more use of it than him. She was always better with inventories and objects.)

He slips his ring back on his finger, falls asleep again.

ii.

She's up before he is.

She usually is. He never knows by how much, how long. He never knows if she ever chooses to just lie there, next to him. He never know if she holds his hand tighter or presses her head against the edge of his jaw. Or if her first instinct is to lift the covers and calmly twist her hand from his, establish the borders and distances and rules they know too well. He doesn't know. He doesn't ask.

It's not quite morning yet, not even for a servant. She lit a candle to do her hair and now the light flickers, something shines and dims and shines again in her fingers. She attaches the ring to her hip (this, he knows she does every morning).

There's no point in lying here. The blanket has been tugged, ebbed out to the far corner, following the path she took in the darkness. He flexes his fingers and breathes in, wonders if she was even there at all. (This is, this must be, another sign of age. He doesn't like it as much. Romantic tendencies he can endure; forgetfulness is unacceptable.) He forgets what footsteps sound like as sheds his sheets and the last feelings of sleep, passes – a flicker, a shadow, a shine – in her mirror, and pulls out a clean pair of trousers.

It's harder to focus on buttons now. He tells himself it's the light. It's harder to focus on what things should be and where things should go. He raises an arm and something snaps. An open-fire sort of crackle, hard and hungry. His bones are made of kindling; the candle blows out.

He forgets the sound of her footsteps. He forgets if she ever made a sound. (Most maids, the good maids, don't.) But her hand is against his jaw and she's shushing him like a child. "Don't stress yourself," she murmurs, "Don't stress yourself." And then her fingers are doing up the buttons on his shirt – cautious, still, where the seams meet skin – smoothing out his collar as he does his tie (because he truly is a boy if he can't do a simple knot). Her breath is at his neck again and she looks at him as the sunlight begins to come in. She bites her lip. Her hand reaches and she pushes hair back from his brow.

"It was out of place," she mutters, letting go.

iii.

The view out the front window (next to the bookshelf, away from the kitchen) is not much. It isn't acre after acre of grass and tall trees and the occasional rush of flowers. It's just a small dirt path and a sky full of too many clouds. He nearly jumps when she places a cup of tea in his hands.

"Easy," she says, stirring her own and peering out the window.

"They'll have left by now," he says, "if they want an easy trip."

She almost laughs, though he's not sure why. "We've never spent a season together, have we?"

"No, not a full season."

She takes another sip, "Perhaps you'll get sick of me."

"Or perhaps you'll tire of me."

She smiles, "We'll just have to wait and see now, won't we?"

iv.

Sometimes they walk to the village. She tells him the fresh air is good for him, better than city air at any rate. He wonders how many times she's made her way to the village while he was busy with lords and ladies and debutante balls. He wonders how much of someone you miss when you subtract a season and a city. He wonders if that distance kept them closer together. (He's too old for all these thoughts. He focuses on the houses on the horizon instead.)

They stop, now and then, when she hears his breath catch or his lungs wheeze. She slows her steps and then reaches for a flower or a rock or points somewhere in the distance, tells him a story that is entirely pointlessly and wholly meaningful. He holds onto her voice and then finds himself leaning against her. (He's not as strong as he used to be; he tries not to see it as weakness. He tries not to find more faults in aging.) But her hand is twisting, tight but not harsh, against his arm, securing him there.

He focuses on her voice.

v.

"The window creaks."

Sitting next to him on the bed, she turns. A hand rests, momentarily, on his chest.

"Go to bed, Mr. Carson," she adjusts the covers over them both.

"It's a bothersome sound."

"It's been like that since we got here." Her hand is running over ribs, absently adjusting the collar of his nightshirt.

"Still –"

" – Bed." Her fingertips brush his chin and then back down, mapping the sides of his chest.

"But –"

And then her hand is lower.

"Mr. Carson."

And lower still.

vi.

"Mrs. Hughes?"

vii.

Breathe in –

The window creaks. (Breathe in. Her hair. Her neck. Kiss her. Breathe out.) There's no light. There's never any light. Just the feeling – separated and disconnected. She's a collection of parts, a thousand small things: the swallow of her throat, a thigh, a breast. (Breathe out. Kiss her. Breathe in.) The bed creaks. Lips and skin and gasps. (Breathe in. Breathe out.) She's something whole. (In. Out. In. Out.) They're something whole. (In. Out.) Together. (In. Out. In.)

– Breathe out.

viii.

"Mrs. Hughes." (It's all he says, all he ever says. And she prefers it that way; "Mrs. Hughes" is stronger than any term of endearment, any frivolous whisper of "love" or "wife" or "dear". Stronger still than "Elsie" or "Mrs. Carson" or whatever other names she has carried in the lines of her palm. "Mrs. Hughes" is the woman he knows; "Mrs. Hughes" is the one he's respected; "Mrs. Hughes" is a compilation of decades of friendship and then something else, and then this. "Mrs. Hughes" is all she's ever been, all she's ever wanted to be.)

ix.

They're quiet, both of them. Though he's not sure what he expected to hear. Not sure he expected a single thing. He doesn't need light to know her teeth are still digging into her lip (pressed up against his side, he can feel her chest moving like a shallow tide; the rest of her body is still). They didn't say a single thing. Should they have? (Are words for the young? They never seemed too fond of them: affection hidden in tealeaves and the residue of wine.)

In the darkness, she's readjusting his collar once more.

They speak in small gestures; they fill the silence.

x.

She pushes his hair back across his brow, smooths her palm against the seam of his shirt.

And then, less hesitant but still slow, she rests her head against his chest.

Her fingers trace the first button.

They fall asleep.

* * *

_Well, finally sat down to write and this happened. Hm. Sorry for neglecting everything recently, but hopefully we'll get back into the swing of things. I'm thinking, possibly, just one more chapter for this story. But we'll see. As always, thank you so much for your reviews. They mean the world to me. (A particular thank you to my new guest reviewer - who I'm assuming is one reviewer - ugh, I'm so flattered you see what you do in these bizarre arrangements.)  
_


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